August 07, 2011

Tony Bruno Calls Pitcher 'Illegal Alien': Sports radio host Tony Bruno called Giants pitcher Ramon Ramirez an "illegal alien" on Twitter after his errant pitch Friday night started a brawl in a game against the Philadelphia Phillies. "Gutless #!@%*# Giants," he posted. "Bochy is a coward for having his illegal alien pitcher hit a guy." The response of Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition: "This guy is a pig."

"My stupid and insensitive twitter post was up less than one minute before I realized it was caustic," Bruno said. "It was removed immediately and I typed a quick apology on twitter and here. Since I was doing my live radio show, I apologized more emphatically on the air, and the podcast is available on my website (tonybrunoshow.com, hour 3) for those who choose to actually get some facts to go along with the hearsay or bloggers who spread falsehoods about my apology not being 'sincere.'"

While I am sure his apology was sincere, it still doesn't reflect well on Mr. Bruno that his gut reaction was to post something prejudiced. I wouldn't argue that he should lose his job over this, but Mr. Bruno should maybe do some self-examining and ask "why, when I got angry, was my first reaction to make a racist comment."

I have never understood why apologies for verbal slurs and similar inane outbursts without changes in behavior, so the thing doesn't happen again, are worth anything to anyone except the conscious of the person who f'ed up.